Beets is a a Dutch family name. Blaupot ten Cate relates that a certain Jan Cornelis, in the persecution of 1570, fled from de Rijp (in the Dutch province of North Holland) to the neighboring village of Beets and hid in a haystack. He then adopted the name of Beets. But this tradition does not seem very acceptable. A. A. Vorsterman van Oijen in 1884 published a Genealogie van het Geslacht Beets, from which it appears that there were two Beets families, one Mennonite and the other Reformed, not related. The first Beets of the Mennonite family mentioned here is a Pieter Beets of about 1680, of whom nothing further is known. Pieter Jans Beets was preacher of the Zonist congregation at Amsterdam, 1682-1710. Jan Gerrits Beets was preacher of the Middelie congregation in 1731. In the 18th century the Mennonite Beets family produced many preachers, all of whom belonged to the strictly orthodox wing.